Obama exacerbates war fatigue

It is understandable that Americans would want to help end the deadly humanitarian crisis in Syria, in which government forces and rebels have been locked in a two-year civil war that has reportedly left 93,000 people dead.

But should the US intervene militarily? On Friday President Obama announced he would start supplying the rebels with U.S. arms, a move some believe could potentially plunge the country into another war.

“It makes me very uneasy,” U.S. Rep. James McGovern said. “Look at Iraq and Afghanistan. What did we achieve? Iraq is a mess right now, and in Afghanistan we are propping up one of the most corrupt governments in the world, while American men and women are still dying over there.

“It is horrific what is happening. Ninety-three thousand people have died, and our natural impulse is to want to help, and we do want to help people, but how do you end the fighting? How do you pursue a political solution?

“How we respond is a difficult decision, but I am uneasy about sending more weapons of war, worried about who will get them, and where they will end up.”

Mr. McGovern’s concerns are warranted.

Unless entering the Syrian conflict is a means to confront Iran, which is reportedly supporting the Syrian government with arms and other resources, there doesn’t seem to be an end game for U.S. military intervention. It also seems impossible to figure out who would be a worthy American ally among the rebel leaders.

While the conflict is generally characterized as rebel fighters trying to overthrow the government, the rebels are divided into splinter groups, and figuring out which to back is like playing Russian roulette.

Indeed, it seems illogical that Mr. Obama, who as a senator questioned the need to go to war in Iraq, and then rode the prescience of that position to the White House, would engage the country militarily in a Syrian civil war that is more convoluted than the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined.

Mr. Obama claims he has proof that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons (about 150 are said to have been killed by chemical weapons), but after Iraq, it is advisable that we take such utterances with a grain of salt.

Last month, for example, Carla Del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria gave an interview to a Swiss-Italian television station in which she said evidence was uncovered that implicated the rebels in using chemical weapons.

“... There are strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas. ... This was used on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities,” she said.

The White House disputed her claim, saying it was more likely that the Assad regime was the culprit.

Who is fooling whom? It is hard not to see the eerie similarity between the chemical weapons claims in Syria, and the weapons of mass destruction claims that sent us to war in Iraq.

It is ironic, according to Mr. McGovern, that on the same day the president committed the country to arming the Syrian rebels, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed the Defense Authorization Bill for fiscal 2014, which reflects in part a desire to bring the country off its war footing.

Included in the bill, for example, are provisions to significantly drawdown American troops and end combat missions in Afghanistan by June 2014; according to the bill, if troops are to remain beyond that deadline a congressional vote would be needed. The bill passed 315-108 (103 Democrats and 212 Republicans).

“It is an indication that people are tired of war,” Mr. McGovern said.